If you follow publishing news, you know by now that Dorchester is doing some desperate things in an effort to bring in new revenues and staunch the loss of income due to poor print sales.
This is not really a time to crow, even if I never submitted to Dorchester or Leisure, its dark fiction imprint. I have read Leisure books, and thought the quality of the books (construction-wise, I mean) was good. So to hear that they’ve done poorly and are showing signs of closing, I’m not really a happy camper. That’s another source of entertainment threatening to go out of business. No, sir, I don’t like it.
Editor Don D’auria is leaving Leisure, as are most of the editing staff. This is not a good sign, when the dude who really was the mover behind Leisure is shown the door, quietly. I’ll echo the thoughts of professional writers in saying I’m sure Don will have no trouble finding a house to work with, or a list of writers willing to write on spec for him.
But this story is also revealing an ugly truth that the industry has still been in denial about, and that’s how drastically we need publishers to get with the times. We need them to abandon a lot of old business practices and streamline their operations for the modern world. You know, the one that developed after the printing press was invented.
As a writer, I’m finding this even more frustrating because the number of places I want to publish at keeps shrinking. I’m an amateur, but I don’t submit to “for the love” markets. If I’m going to submit something, I at least want a semi-pro rate. I want to work with a company that will let me have some leeway on the cover, and that will work on actually editing the book instead of just passing it through Word’s spell checker. I want to work for a company with a friendly ebook policy, and by friendly, I mean no DRM, and no attempts to worm extra profits out of the authors through shaky ebook royalty rates. I want a company to make print books available, sure, but I’d prefer a POD company, which has a smaller carbon footprint. (Note I said prefer. This is not a hard and fast rule. It’s a guideline.)
That’s a tall order to begin with, but yes, there are publishers who fit this description. The problem is, for some of them the move to digital and POD was too late, and they’re still losing staff in a gushing torrent of talent. Oh, but the managers will still be around. Thank God the publishers will hold on to that vital resource. (9_9)
I know some writers will see this as a sign to abandon ship and self-publish exclusively. I feel like that’s putting all the eggs in one basket, and I think publishers can still serve a purpose by generating audiences for new writers. But the publishers are actually still insisting it should be the other way around. They insist that in this day and age, I the writer ought to be strumping my name to build my brand and my audience even before I sell a story to them. So then my readers will come with me to any new house I arrive at.
In theory, guys. And I’m willing to go along with generating my own audience to help boost your sales, really. But the fact is, my readers don’t read everything I write. I get higher numbers writing a vampire book than I do writing about halflings or werekin. I get almost nothing when I do the sci-fi spec fic. But I like writing about those things, so sometimes my audience numbers dip a bit. And, that’s okay.
But my round-about point is, if I send you a story that doesn’t have vampires, some of my readers might not bother to check it out at all. And I’m coming to you because I need more numbers than what I can generate on my own. Rather than leaching readers from the crops that writers harvest, digital age publishers need to start harvesting their own crops of readers. They need to do this by hosting free short content on their web sites (think novelette and novella), to make their home pages “sticky.” Sure, they need to pay writers for the freebies, but this can be similar to printing a story in a print periodical with a one-time fee.
Those e-stories can also have reader polls, allowing readers to say whether a story is good enough to become a print title. And if enough readers do want a title as print, then the publishers could either sell those stories individually or as collection.
See, this is a double-win for you, publishers. With these profit leaders, you draw in new readers to your imprint, and you brand yourself. Your polls show readers that you are willing to listen, and they begin to actively participate, making finding out what they want to read more of easier. And, using that kind of research allows you to keep building on past successes instead of throwing twenty clones at the wall and seeing which one still sticks after the first 90 days of sales. I mean, you tell us writers how the “shotgun approach” is inappropriate for queries or submissions. So why do you think shotgunning your readers with a bunch of mediocre genre clones is a good idea? (We’ll start the Jeopardy music while you formulate your answer…)
As a reader, I want publishers to get it together and start courting me again, instead of spitting on me and my e-reader. You’re the one still worshiping an old printing press like that bygone era machine is your savior. Well, that’a fine and all, but this new thing called the Internet sprouted up about 20 years ago. And since then, you’ve looked at it like a spoiled brat watches brussel sprouts. As publisher, you’ve repeatedly shouted, “don’t wanna!” Well too bad, because we the readers are mommy, and we are tired of your bullshit. That’s why your print sales suck ass. Don’t like it? Get with the times and stop dragging your heels. We’ll reward your entry into a fair ebook market with higher sales. How high? Is 119% good enough for you? (Look it up if you think I’m pulling numbers out of my ass, publishers. It’s not that hard to find on Google.)
As a writer, I don’t know who to submit to anymore, so I’ve gone from around 12-17 submission in the past years to 6 this year. And just this last week a publisher who I’d had high hopes for was revealed to be hiding their own special kinds of douche baggery. So bang goes submitting to them too. And that leaves me with one less market for a story I really REALLY want to sell and get a larger audience than I could get on my own.
And, that royally pisses me off, but there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. I’m used to getting rejections cause my writing isn’t a good fit, but at least in the past, I was able to find places that I wanted to submit to and felt good about. Most of the places I submitted to, however, are already out of business. Most of them tanked in 2009, or became so unsavory in 2010 that I wouldn’t submit to them without fear of alienating my own little base of readers. I have enough trouble picking up new readers because I’m a hack. I don’t need a publisher making some of my work harder by being a bag of dicks.
I’m running out of places where I feel okay submitting, and I find myself wondering when this will end and publishers will finally move into the global economy. (That means not segmenting the digital markets for extra profits too, guys) But I’m really not holding my breath. Eventually, publishers will either collapse from all their lousy practices coming back to haunt them (fuel costs, print costs, warehousing costs, remaindering; letting booksellers buy titles in bulk without researching their own market base; letting booksellers return books before most will ever have time to develop an audience; etc., etc…) or they will be forced to grow up and move into the new market with an improved attitude about the market and its buyers.
Publishers apparently think they’re such hot shit that they don’t have to bend to market whims. Any basic education in business management will tell you that’s a foolish and fatal attitude to have. It’s the lousiest kind of customer service, and publishers have been heaping out this kind of scorn on readers for the last few years. They’ve shown scorn to any writers daring to suggest that they might modernize their publishing practices, and they’ve insisted that even as their profit margins slipped away, they really knew what was best for everyone involved.
Well look, if the writers say you suck at your job, and the readers say it too, then it’s true. This dip in print sales is your lousy performance review, publishers. You’re on notice to work harder, and smarter. You’re on notice to improve your submission process, and to lose that whiny attitude about working with email. You’re on notice that you need to treat your customers with some actual customer service. You’ve gotten big for your britches, but you aren’t so big that you can’t fall in a puddle and get dirty. And child, you are filthy at this point.
Grow up, publishers. Readers and writers both still need and want you around. But if we’re going to get back together as one big happy family, you need to be more mature about the subject of change.
Now, eat your brussel sprouts, take a bath, and then let’s get back to talking about that book you wanted me to buy.
I am a bisexual transsexual with bigender tendencies, a former resident of Texas, but now live in Milan with my husband. I used to write in a variety of genres and published my work through 
